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since i don't wanna miss this party at all... time for some bad ideas:

the presentation Log of the campaing was my nemesis in those days at the end of the year.
first i created this:

and that remains as first main.pcx for 8 long months... but then something changed my mind
and after some ideas it comes out this:

ok it was bad.. looking in internet i found this and is a movie's poster:

but it is cover by copyrights... and soo.... i was forced to create one by myself...
and after 4 days of hard work it comes out something of interesting... something that makes Sluggs laugh until die... something of UNESPECTED...
..some.. well
in few words, that:

Another mass-palettisation run for the EP

Ok, I have just created a new installation of thief2 and Dromed, created a new mission, created a big airbrush, loaded the scripts. It's all ready to begin a brand new FM.
I know, it's just nothing. But since it's the beginning of a new year I hope that it will be a good omen.

I knew rotating the textures would effect the shadows, but I didn't think quite this much. Note the shadow on the handrail in each picture. I hated the choppy look so I rotated the wall texture 64 degrees on the left and 116 on the right to fix it, but of course the texture would then be terribly misaligned so I had to make new textures and pre-rotate them, then rotate them again in Dromed. . .gahh!

Holy crap, that's amazing, I had no idea. And you're clever to do it that way. I had to do some special texture-chopping for What Lies Below, but that was for making the disappearing walls and whatnot, and didn't involve any rotation.

I've been getting The Olde Castle ready to put up as abandoned... figured I should at least make it so you can generally walk around without bringing Dromed to its knees. I had also forgotten that I put NV's ground fog from Hazelshade into the mission (it's missing in shot #2 below). When I release it, it will also contain a demo of AI whose alpha varies based on how visible the are (like the Keepers in Equilibrium, only without the use of any stims or receptrons). It's pretty much ready but I want to get another one or two of my abandoned missions ready and do it all at once.

When I release it, it will also contain a demo of AI whose alpha varies based on how visible the are (like the Keepers in Equilibrium, only without the use of any stims or receptrons).

Is that the "Rat's Eyes" method? Did you ever work out how to have it work smoothly depending on light level, rather than the AI being either transparent or visible? (At least, I seem to recall that was the problem with the method?)

Very cool Yandros - I especially love the haunt you've got there. I can't wait to see the transparency effect in action. NV's Hazelshade effect is pretty sweet too, I've added it to all my water areas. It looks so much better than just plain'ol water.

Did you ever work out how to have it work smoothly depending on light level, rather than the AI being either transparent or visible?

No. This would probably be easier now that we have more of your scripts available. In fact, a new custom script or param on NVPhantomTrap might be the easiest way to go, it could adjust the alpha between min and max based on how well lit the AI is. Perhaps the TrigAIAwareShift-trailer rat is still needed in some fashion if an AI can't access its own visibility value.

Originally Posted by Nameless Voice

(At least, I seem to recall that was the problem with the method?)

The problem I was seeing when trying to put together the demo was that the system was unreliable (which is why I've never released a tut or demo on the method). As I recall, when ai_aware_of_player was enabled and the player was visible to the rat, it refused to change the primary AI's alpha sometimes, in spite of being blind, deaf and on Team Neutral. Since the primary AI in most cases will be hostile to the player, it could be bad if the AI is in shadow (and transparent) and the player in a lighted area: the AI will charge into the light but not become more visible, making for a rather difficulty fight.

Basically, the AI has a fnord CreatureAttached to his abdomen, and the fnord has a vhot at -2 on the X axis (putting it 2 units behind him). A rat with VK's TrigAIAwareShift script is ParticleAttached to the vhot, and it sends TurnOn and TurnOff to the AI's TrapPhantom script when it is able to see/no longer able to see the AI respectively. It's pretty simple really, but flawed as I said before. If I ever do a Keeper mission, I'll want to have something more reliable and easier to implement. Plus having the AI pop out of the hierarchy in working condition would be nice, so they could be emitted; that's not possible with the current setup due to the links required.

I'm a bit unfamiliar with the whole rat thing. So, a rat, a neutral AI is attached to another AI. The host AI's visibility is determined by what the rat sees?

I think it's a clever way to do it, in principle, because it naturally aligns the visibility to G to what a generic AI sees. It basically levels the visibility playing field with G seeing AI in just the same way with AI seeing G.

It has good potential for gameplay. If you've ever played Thievery ... the thieves light meter directly affects their visibility to the other players (in particular the guards), so you see them literally emerging from the shadows, running past, and then disappearing back into the shadows. (Edit: But with T2 AI, there's no light meter computation for AI, so using a 3rd AI is a backdoor way to get it.)

In T2's context, it would allow for an Equilibrium style mission where the player could be a little more strategic in keeping the AI in the light to avoid being caught by surprise, and lead to a whole new relationship between G and the shadows ... on the one hand, the shadows hide him from the AI, but they also hide the AI from him! Going into the light exposes the AI to him, but also exposes him to the AI. It adds an interesting cost-benefit thinking to the whole thing.

But torches get their particle attachment links via a metaproperty, so maybe you could do that with the AI.

Yes, and the ParticleAttachement link is on the archetype and created upon instantiation. But the CreatureAttach and two ScriptParams links do not work that way, and not sure if they would from a Metaproperty. Eventually, if anyone ever really needs it, I think this is best handled by a single custom script on the AI if that's possible (and I'm not sure that it is).

Spent the last few days completely reworking my website. The new style will be applied across the board to provide a much more uniform look (currently most every page has a different style, and there are several different forms of navigation). It also uses the same colour scheme as my blog - black backgrounds with green and blue accents.

Local screenshot (click for large):

I've learned a few new CSS tricks in the process. I only wish I knew enough PHP to make the individual mission pages scripted, so I don't have to convert every blasted one of them.

I've been getting The Olde Castle ready to put up as abandoned... figured I should at least make it so you can generally walk around without bringing Dromed to its knees. I had also forgotten that I put NV's ground fog from Hazelshade into the mission (it's missing in shot #2 below). When I release it, it will also contain a demo of AI whose alpha varies based on how visible the are (like the Keepers in Equilibrium, only without the use of any stims or receptrons). It's pretty much ready but I want to get another one or two of my abandoned missions ready and do it all at once.